I invite you to join me in entering the bog, dense and dark, thick with fog. 

This performance emerges from an ongoing process of fieldwork in bogs across Ireland and the Netherlands. Bogs are wetland environments composed of layers of decayed plant material. In Ireland, these landscapes have a long history of human intervention from British colonial drainage plans for agriculture, state industrialised peat extraction for fuel to ‘green’ energy and data infrastructures. Extractivism has defined how the bog is known and viewed by humans only insofar as it can be converted from a ‘wasteland’ into value. 

I entered this process through co-creation, seeking to understand if my practice could facilitate more collaborative encounters between humans and the bog. Yet, repeatedly, I found myself complicit in its extraction. My research then unfolded as a process of self-experimentation in which my fieldwork became both the subject and method of the research. As I conduct each visit, I negotiate how my practices may reproduce the structures I try to critique, I then alter my actions for the following visit. It is an iterative and reflexive process. 

Performance: Dualtagh McDonnell-Grundy
Fieldwork assistance, documentation, technical support: Ryan Allen and zîwan arya
Supervisor: Lucie Strecker

Mentor: Agat Sharma 

Photos: Steef Kersbergen